Assignment One It is time to stop thinking back about the global marketing conce

Question

Assignment One
It is time to stop thinking back about the global marketing concepts you’ve covered in the
course. In the past, Namibia paid little attention to internal trade. If they could pick up some
extra sales through exporting, that was fine. But the big market was at home, and it teemed with
opportunities.
Companies today can no longer afford to pay attention only to their domestic market, regardless
of its size. Many industries are global industries, and firms that operate globally achieve lower
costs and higher brand awareness. At the same time, global marketing is risky, because of
viable exchange rates, unstable governments, protectionist’s tariffs and trade barriers, and
several other factors. Given the potential gains and risks of international marketing, companies
need a systematic way to make their global marketing decisions.

The Assignment
Assignment One
Socio-cultural, Legal, Political & Economic, Ecology, etc. Analysis.
Select a Namibian company of your choice with a specific one
Namibian product in any part of Namibia that wants to enter the
Northern Sudanese market. Critically looked at the challenges (how it
might affect your product) by considering the concepts, theories and
models learned and studied (as indicated above).
(100 marks)
Minimum ten references.
Maximum six (6) pages

Explanation / Answer

Let’s start with the term International Marketing (IM)

International marketing is, in short, nothing but the application of marketing principles in more than one country, by companies across national borders.

International marketing is based on an extension of a company’s local marketing strategy and activities, with special attention paid to marketing identification, targeting, and decisions internationally.

As technology creates leaps in communication, social exposure, transportation, and financial flows, the world continues to feel smaller and smaller. It is possible for both, companies and consumers to conduct business in almost any country around the world, thanks to advances in international trade. According to the World Trade Organization, the volume of international merchandise trade increased as high as 33 times between 1951 and 2010.

Brands and products that originate in one country are enthusiastically welcomed and accepted in others. For instance, Louis Vuitton handbags, BMWs, and Columbian coffee, all foreign products, are symbols of status and quality in the United States, and many American brands, like Warner Brothers motion pictures, have similar footholds overseas.

However, globalization has created just as many challenges as opportunities for brands that venture overseas. Because consumers have so many more options for similar products, companies must ensure that their products are high in quality and seek affordability. Additionally, these products cannot be marketed identically across the globe.

International marketing takes more into consideration than just language. It involves culture, market saturation, customer behaviors and such attributes also. American and European companies, especially, have turned their international marketing efforts into something more than just exporting. They have adapted their branding to account for differences in consumers, demographics, and world markets.

Now coming to the detailed analysis of the main attributes:

Socio-Cultural: Socio-cultural factor means a set of beliefs, customs, practices and behavior that exists within a population. International companies often include an examination of the socio-cultural environment prior to entering their target markets.

We live in a society which have distinctive culture of its own. Culture plays major role to continue and imbibe structure of society. So socio-cultural atmosphere refers to the prevalent structure of society and corresponding cultural ethos. Culture is dynamic in nature and the pace at which culture is influenced by others is fasten due to transformation in communication between different cultures. As we get to know more about other's culture, we became more aware about our own.

Legal: The legal factor can be defined as the attitude of the government toward business, current trends of public control in taxation, regulation of commerce and competition, freedom of contract, antitrust legislation and its relationship to marketing, mergers and acquisitions; and labor management relations. It is essential for future business leaders and upcoming entrepreneurs to have an understanding of the role of the law and legal risk in shaping business decisions, achieving competitive advantage, and avoiding legal pitfalls.

Political: Political factors are, in simple terms, the Government actions which affects the operations of a company or business. These actions may be on local, regional, national or international level. Business owners and managers pay close attention to the political environment to gauge how government actions will affect their company.

The political environment is perhaps known to be among the least predictable elements in the business environment. A cyclical political environment develops and evolves, as democratic governments have to pursue re-election every few years. This external element of business includes the effects and after-effects of pressure groups. Pressure groups tend to change government policies.

As political systems in different areas vary from place to place, the political impact differs. The country’s population democratically elects open government system. In totalitarian systems, government’s power derives from a select group.

Corruption is one of the most influential barrier to economic development for many countries. Some firms survive and grow by offering bribes to government officials. Thus the success and growth of these companies are not based on the value they offer to consumers.

Economical: The economic environment consists of external factors in a business market and the broader economy that can influence a business. You can divide the economic environment into the microeconomic environment, which affects business decision making, such as individual actions of firms and consumers, and the macroeconomic environment, which affects an entire economy and all of its participants.

Many economic factors act as external constraints on your business, which means that you have little, if any, control over them.

Macroeconomic influences are broad economic factors that either directly or indirectly affect the entire economy plus its working and all of its participants, including your business. These factors include such things as:

Microeconomic factors influence how your business will make decisions in the day to day operations. Unlike macroeconomic factors, these factors are far less broad in scope and do not necessarily affect the entire economy as a whole. Microeconomic factors which can influence a business include:

Ecological: Ecological factors, also known as environmental factors, refer to variables regarding the physical environment (the climate of Earth, etc.). This can include things like consumer health, climate change, the availability of energy or any direct consequences of these things.

From the sound of it, it may seem that environmental factors have very little to do with business. On the contrary, though, environmental factors can affect many different important aspects of business.

Examples of environmental factors affecting business include:

In this case, I chose Air Namibia as a company. The product would be an Airline range of Air Namibia.

If you see, Air Namibia is a successful Namibian air service. It recently backed the ‘Skytrax’ award, and thus is doing in its own genre of business. Air Namibia is also voted as the second best regional airline in Africa, which is a prestigious nomination to be awarded with.

Business environment were complexed since the beginning in North Sudan, but slowly, in today’s era, the business opportunities have started opening up there. After the opening of US sanctions, business opportunities would be given a push to help them around in the Sudanese region.

Following are the analysis of different environmental attributes related to Air Namibia to enter North Sudan:

Socio-cultural: As said earlier, Socio-cultural factor means a set of beliefs, customs, practices and behavior that exists within a population. Now, beliefs and cultures of two different nations would obviously differ from one another. Because of Sudan’s great cultural diversity, it is difficult to classify the traditional cultures of the various peoples. Sudan’s traditional societies have visible diversity in linguistic, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics. And although improved communications, increased social and economic mobility, and the spread of a money economy have slowly led to a general loosening of the social ties, customs, relationships, and modes of organization in traditional cultures, much from the past still haunts the present. The following three of those cultures merely suggests some rather prominent cultural patterns that are illustrative of the wide range present. These three cultures are those of the Fur, Muslim Africans in the far western part of the country; the Humr tribe of the Baqq?rah Arabs, of west-central Sudan; and the Otoro tribe of the Nuba, in east-central Sudan.

This shows that Air Namibia needs to spend a lot of time and money in the R&D section, and this will answer their doubts relating what should be the services that needs to be started in this North Sudanese region so that the locals would reflect positively to the new business.

Legal: Arbiters of disputes and administrators of formal and informal laws come in various forms throughout Sudan, depending on ethnic, religious and political factors. Judicial courts are provided for under both statute and customary law while informal community practices also rely upon local chiefs, known as Sultans, to resolve disputes between community members. Indeed. Customary laws generally consist of non-state dispute resolution systems that are usually based upon local customary, traditional or tribal systems of justice. Given Sudan's ethnic and religious plurality, customary laws and practice are diverse, differing from tribe-to-tribe and community-to-community.

Thus, given this, the legal situation needs to be handled and addressed with care, so that there would be no further complexity to be arrived when the Air Namibia branch is setup in Sudan.

Political: In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, the political environment seems to have hardened recently. Following years of economic growth, with some years reaching double digit growth figures, the situation has gotten more precarious. Facing the risk of losing the highly needed revenue from oil, of which estimates 75% of the country’s reserves will go to the new republic of South Sudan, along with a sudden drop in foreign currency reserves, the government has initiated certain restrictions on the outflow of foreign currency. This has been done by banning certain imports, and in order to strengthen state finances, also reducing state subsidies on certain vital commodities, such as sugar and fuel, which have followed critical responses. These macroeconomic initiatives have led to sporadic popular protests in several towns of Northern Sudan in the early part of the year.

This shows the state of somewhat political turmoil for North Sudan. Thus, its altogether risky plus complex in making a comfortable business space in North Sudan, and efforts would be needed to do the same.

Economical: Between 2011 and 2016, real GDP growth averaged 3.3%, compared to 7.1% in 2000-2010, and is estimated at 3.5% for 2017, following a decline in domestic demand. the abolition of energy subsidies and the reduction in imports resulting from the depreciation of the exchange rate and the United States sanctions, definitively revoked in October 2017. In 2018/2019, it is projected at 3, 7% on average, thanks to private and public consumption and the reforms induced by the lifting of sanctions. The immediate impact of the reforms will dampen growth, which is expected to pick up in the medium term with increased domestic supply and exports.

Talking about Macro economical level, despite revenue losses in 2017, public spending remained constant; the budget deficit is expected to grow to 2.4% of GDP, compared to 1.8% in 2016, but according to the International Monetary Fund, it would actually be larger (7.7%) because official exchange rate subsidies are recognized only in the balance sheet of the Central Bank. Monetary policy remains expansionary to meet the growing need for budget funding. Combined with loans to agriculture, the increase in gold purchases by the Central Bank (accounting for 39% of exports) extended the monetary reserve from 27.5% at the end of 2016 to 52% in June 2017. inflation soared from 17.2% in September 2016 to 35.1% in September 2017. The current account shrank, reflecting lower imports.

This shows that the situation in North Sudan is a bit of complexity. Research related to economical background, past and present as well as an eye for the future would be needed here. Without proper effective and efficient scrutinizing of such things, ease of business is not an easy task to expect.

Environmental/Ecological: Sudan is richly endowed with natural resources such as oil, forests, and agricultural lands. Sudan's long history of conflict, combined with irrational utilization of natural resources, has created a range of critical environmental challenges. Sudan faces many environmental issues including desertification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, tribal and ethnic conflict and poverty are only too common. Sudan's current issues include inadequate supplies of potable water, wildlife populations threatened by excessive hunting, soil erosion, desertification, periodic drought. The three environmental issues I will be focusing on are deforestation, desertification (spread of desert-like conditions in arid or semi-arid areas, due to overgrazing, loss of agriculturally productive soils, or climate change) and Sudan's lack of water/water pollution. Deforestation is the destruction of vast areas of forest, for example, unsustainable forestry practices, agricultural and range land clearing, and the over exploitation of wood products for use as fuel, without planting new growth.

This denotes that the Ecological situation in Sudan would not be easy to deal with. Huge expenditure might be needed towards standardization and building of favorable environmental conditions as well as for the business and also for the potential consumers.

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